From The Eyes of Heaven by Beverley Cooper, published by Scirocco Drama. Nic Barlow is an African-Canadian in his thirties. He has moved to a small town to teach science at the local school. He has brought some homework to Eloise.

NIC:

You know Galileo was also the first guy to figure out that the Milky Way wasn’t just a cloud but a multitude of stars. Look at them. And Jupiter as clear as day and it’s millions and millions of miles away. We are looking at the same skies that Galileo looked at, give or take a satellite or two. It just boggles my mind. Living in the city you forget about the magnitude of it all, but here…. I can’t help it. I look up at those night skies and feel completely insignificant...I feel overwhelmed by questions. Do those stars go on and on forever? Or is there an end to it all. And if there is an end, what is that? How can there be an end? Doesn’t an end to something signify something else beginning? And then I think what a miracle it is we are here at all. Or is it? Maybe it has to be from some kind of divine design.

The scientific side of me, of course, says no. We are a just a whim of luck. Life slowly materialized out of the Big Bang. But then my spiritual side says how can that be? This wondrous beauty must be part of a bigger plan. It’s all so miraculous. Trees are miraculous. Insects are miraculous. Babies! And when I look up at those stars I think is it naïve for us to think we are the only intelligent creatures in the universe. Earth cannot be the only place where life exists. Not with the other solar systems that must be out there. And going along that line of thinking then we probably aren’t the smartest lights in the sky either. I mean look how we’re tipping the balance of nature right off its axis. It makes logical sense that there are beings out there who are more advanced than us. Who have mastered interplanetary travel. Who are watching us. Observing us. Perhaps occasionally interacting. The scientific community is very divided about this. Most will smile knowingly and say yes there probably is life on other planets. But if you push them to commit to admitting to alien life forms they get very evasive. That’s our current cultural climate. It’s only supermarket tabloids that talk about UFOs. It’s just silly. It’s not cool to say you’ve seen a strange configuration of lights hovering fifteen feet away from you? Is it, Eloise ?